The sand was inescapable. Through the long years Tirrok had spent in the Sutek, his every meal had crunched with grit, and the slightest breeze scoured at his cracked skin. But five days ago, the first sandstorm of winter tolled Tirrok’s twentieth haze with the Sutek people, and tonight’s feast would mark the end of his childhood. A new man of the tribe, he could leave his adoptive village and put the desert at his back for good.

As the brilliant disk of first moon waded through the eastern sands, Tirrok ducked into the tent where he’d trespassed for two decades. Seated on the hard-packed sand within, the clan elder who’d consented to raise him waited, his stern bronze gaze more hawkish than usual in the fading light.

“Grandfather,” intoned Tirrok with a slight bow of his head, staring at the fire and waiting to be dismissed.

Instead, the old man gestured for his adopted ward to sit before him, and Tirrok dropped to the sand, anxious at the unusual behavior.

Renowned as Jokkel the Guardian, the tribal elder had once led an ancient band of warriors sworn to protect the sanctity of the desert. He’d completed the perilous entrance rite in the summer of his fourth haze and left his village to be raised as a sacred Dua Dara mage. Only the rare child succeeded as Jokkel had, venturing alone into the deep desert with a mere three days to tame a wild pegasus foal. But he’d abdicated his position after decades of leadership to adopt the infant Tirrok, found still breathing in a local well. “Tonight, you are a man,” came his stoic preface. “You choose to leave?”